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06 August 2012

Grounded: Engaging the Spiritual in Poetry

by Sarah Wells for Poets Quarterly

I’ve used the phrase “engaging the spiritual”
as if there’s some outlet I plug into in order to upload God. Or if I posture
myself just so, with the right lighting and some incense burning, maybe then
the environment will be suitable to properly “engage the spirit,” and then I am
a vessel, a mouthpiece, a projector from which pours the cryptic, holy,
inspired words of God.

But forget the candles for a while and rely
instead on the shrinking sun to illuminate the earth beneath your feet, your
now quite bare feet, because “engaging the spiritual” means getting the grit
between your toes and then needing to clean it out. There’s nothing like
running that spray from the hose over your feet, the blades of grass bending
beneath the weight of water.

After all, you don’t spend your day in the
chapel underneath a stained glass window composing devotional poems. You are
sweeping up Cheerios from underneath the table. You are balancing budgets in
spreadsheets. You are sitting in meetings checking your Twitter feed. There
might be times and seasons for incense, but in the world of databases and dirty
laundry, sippy cups and playground swings, it is critical to remember that God
is in the small things, that spiritual truths are not hiding away in
cathedrals. They are here in the plain sight of day.

This means living open to what the universe
delivers. Maybe a field of dandelions, maybe a sparrow attacking a bluebird
nest, maybe the scab on your shin… there is so much and every molecule pulses
with spirit, every atom embodies an element of holiness, surely something interesting exists within your
eyesight right now that deserves a little closer observation. Even the dirt and
water and grass and your feet—consider it.

Write poetry from the ground up. Ask “Why
this and not that?” or “What does this mean?” or “What else is there to know
about this?” Rather than observe and then presume to know all of the answers,
questioning propels the writer into the realm of mystery, questioning humbles
the speaker down from the position of all-knowing observer to one who has eyes
to see and ears to hear. Questioning opens up possibility.

Writing spiritual poetry requires this
repositioning because spiritual poetry is acknowledging that something greater
than the “I” exists. This confession changes the entire perspective of the
observer, and as the writer of a spiritual poem, I must aim the lens through
which the reader sees my world at the proper angle. Through this repositioning,
the ego of the poem takes a backseat to everything else, and instead of the
poet declaring just how clever she is through the poem, she becomes smaller
while her subject becomes greater. An effective spiritual poem probably won’t
be didactic, because in order to teach, one must speak with authority. Instead,
the spiritual poem speaks with its one small voice in relation to something
much larger, it holds out its hand and says, see what I found? A pebble! A
flower! Cheerios!

This is partly achieved through the exploration
of the questions that have been asked in the poem, and it is communicated
through tone, rhythm, and spacing. Consider this poem by Franz Wright, which
begins his Pulitzer-prize winning book, Walking
to Martha’s Vineyard:

“Year One”

I was still
standing

on a
northern corner

Moonlit
winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

Proof

of Your
existence? There is nothing

but.

This poem is a poem of beginnings, of initial
awe and awakening to some greater presence in the world. There is a tremendous
amount of white space happening in the poem which seems to give it breathing
room and emphasize the wintry emptiness of a “northern corner” and those dark
clouds. And then that final
stanza, so simply stated, with that beautiful turn of the line. I can almost
see the camera zoom out from the speaker of the poem to the whole world. All of
it. Proof.

It is an effective spiritual poem, not just
because Wright capitalizes “Your,” but because there is a clear issue at stake:
the speaker is suddenly aware of his world and his place in it (that shrinking
ego thing I mentioned), and because he is asking a question that opens up
possibilities, that invites the spirit in with a flicker of recognition. Or
sometimes it’s a strobe light, and because you invited, suddenly you see
something new you hadn’t seen in that object or moment before, some truth or
beauty or goodness or reality that was concealed until just now.

What excites me about spiritual poetry is
that you can work on the macro-level and on the micro-level, zoom in, zoom out,
ask for more, talk directly at God or just look for his thumbprint. As a poet
deeply interested in spiritual matters, I find God turning up in all sorts of
places where you wouldn’t think he’d be. That is the joy of writing and reading
spiritual poetry, discovering something I’d never known or felt before, my body
nodding, yes, yes, that is it, there it is, the divine indwelt. And then this
greater joy: to share that experience with another human being through the
written word, poet and reader, a small community of believers who are now
gathered in worship around this little altar.

Sarah M. Wells is the author of Pruning Burning Bushes and the chapbook Acquiesce. Her poems and essays have
appeared in Ascent, Christianity & Literature,
Measure, New Ohio Review, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, River Teeth, and
elsewhere. www.sarahmwells.com.

1 comment:

Poetry that springs from a devout heart leads kindred hearts to the ever-sweet One … No other divine faculty perhaps has a greater power of transcendence over limits to the illimitable.Thank you.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shabd